


I Think it Mercy, If Thou Wilt Forget

by MlleClaudine



Series: Cophine [4]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Expansion, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sex, Moral Ambiguity, Science, but really who could blame her, or rather Cosima gets shitfaced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4799099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MlleClaudine/pseuds/MlleClaudine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place during s02e03 and s02e04, in which the dynamic between Cosima and Delphine begins to irrevocably change. Some fluff to leaven the angst, but otherwise this is a bit heavier going than the previous stories in the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/314495">series</a>. Feedback as always is greatly appreciated!</p><p>Visit my silly Tumblr thingie over at <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/blog/mlleclaudine">https://www.tumblr.com/blog/mlleclaudine</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"That is... unspeakably cruel."

Silently I curse the catch in my voice and the sting of the tears that I cannot keep from spilling down my cheeks. I refuse to wipe them away, letting their bitter salt fuel my anger.

Aldous regards me impassively; he is uncharacteristically subdued, probably due to the presence of the impeccably dressed and coiffed figure who languidly paces by the window behind his desk. "Perhaps. But I think it will serve admirably as a wake-up call. We haven't seen any indication so far that Cosima is truly motivated to begin seeking a cure for her condition."

"By forcing her to participate in the dissection of a body that looks exactly like her own? I would think that having her view the tapes would be sufficiently motivating."

"I believe that Aldous is right. There's something to be recommended for confronting her with a rather drastic object lesson," says the monster who wears Cosima's face and shares Cosima's genome and brilliant mind but none of her warmth, her innate kindness, her effervescent life force. The clipped tones are precise and as flat as her mask-like affect. She speaks other languages in the same way, fluently and correctly but without idiom or inflection. I think it amuses her that I refuse to answer her in French, but I cannot bear her indifference to the nuances of my native tongue. "You may think it harsh, but concrete evidence is always more convincing than the abstract."

"That's not a lesson, it's, it's grotesque! I'm not even — " I take a deep breath, trying to center myself. "Having done a 4-week elective clerkship in med school does _not_ qualify me to conduct an autopsy. Who knows what pathology I might miss because I don't have the clinical knowledge and experience?"

"Dr. Nealon has already obtained all the histopath and blood samples he needs, and he's also done an MRI and run SPECT/CT and PET/CT scans — 

"He ran a PET scan on a corpse?" I can't help blurting out.

The wide dark eyes are cold, empty, chilling. I am reminded irresistibly of Cosima's shark analogy. "Once the subject was confirmed to be brain-dead, the body was maintained on support so that we could ascertain its biological responses to various therapeutic interventions. We have sufficient tissue cultures for future trials."

I suppress a shudder of revulsion, both at Rachel's callous dismissal of the deceased's humanity and at the thought of what Nealon's "interventions" might comprise. The man is undeniably a genius but there is something intrinsically off-putting about him, quite apart from the perpetual fug of halitosis and stale cigarette smoke that always surrounds him; the rumor going about is that he lost his license to practice in the States due to patient abuse and ethics violations. "How long was _Jennifer_ subjected to such postmortem indignities? And what has her family been told about her passing?"

Possibly the slight thinning of her perfectly outlined and tinted lips could be construed as a frown. "That is none of your concern. The point is that you needn't worry about actually recording your findings, as they would be redundant and no doubt incomplete," she says, still staring at me with her incuriously uncommunicative gaze; it gives me the unnerving impression that she has not blinked since I entered the office. "Essentially, Dr. Cormier, your part in this matter is to be window dressing. Which should be a familiar role for you. Wouldn't you say, Aldous?"

He shifts uncomfortably in his chair and coughs.

Fury floods me with heat, my jaws clenching at the effort it takes not to slap the smug almost-expression from her face. "Just what are you referring to, Miss Duncan?"

One sculpted eyebrow flickers. "Why, in your position as the highest profile graduate of the ENS Paris program, of course. You do still function as their alumni liason for Dyad's headhunting department, do you not?"

My hands ball up into fists in the pockets of my lab coat. I know I will regret anything I say to her right now, so I address Aldous instead. "When and where is this charade to take place?"

He hands me an intradepartmental delivery packet, a padded envelope that contains a DV cassette identified only by Jennifer's tag number printed on the label. "I'll leave it to you to decide on the timing. The lab next to the basement morgue in the old wing is set up as an autopsy room. You'll find everything you need there. Delphine," he says, leaning forward across his desk, an edge creeping into his voice, "we need her on board, mind, body and soul. If it takes frightening her to get there, so be it."

I turn on my heel without acknowledging either of them, heading down the long corridor to my office. Cosima is due later this morning for her new employee orientation at Human Resources Management, so I have several hours to commune with Rubin and Robbins & Cotran. Despite Rachel's disregard, I am determined to carry out my investigation with as much professionalism, thoroughness and respect as I possibly can. Jennifer deserves no less than my best effort. And much as it makes me cringe to admit it, Cosima needs this. Whether or not she will forgive me for it, whether or not I can forgive myself, remains to be seen.


	2. Chapter 2

My phone chirps. I glance at the screen to read Cosima's text:

_` You would not *believe* the stories these guys can tell about the muckety mucks` _

I pick up the phone and reply. **Are you still in orientation?**

_` No, we were done a while ago. Jeannie took us to lunch. Back soon` _

"Jeannie"? She's already on a first-name basis with J. A. Newsome, the formidable dragon lady of HRM who reportedly knows where all of the bodies — figurative and literal — are buried? This should be interesting.

The knock on my door comes a few minutes later. "Come in."

"Hey!" says Cosima, shedding her coat and tossing it over a chair, leaving her in a grey lace tanktop, one of her ever-present patterned scarves and velvety dark violet pants. She gives me a soft kiss in greeting. Looking around, she goes first over to the huge floor-to-ceiling window to peer out at the neatly landscaped courtyard and its reflecting pond below, then wanders the perimeter of my office. "Dude, this is pretty sweet."

"It's not very big, but I do like the view."

"You even have a shower in here," she calls from the bathroom. "That rocks. The one nearest to my lab is in this really grim communal bathroom down at the end of the hall that looks like it was updated maybe in the '70s — you know, tiles and fixtures in Harvest Gold and that pukey avocado green. Guess I could always clean up at my eye wash station in a pinch." She returns from her brief tour. I gesture for her to sit in the chair beside my desk, but she opts instead to perch sideways on my lap, draping her arms around my neck and kissing me soundly.

I school my body and face not to betray the tension I have been trying to keep at bay, giving in to the simple pleasures of holding the slender weight of her against me, feeling the wiry strength of her limbs, exploring the tastes and textures of her mouth, breathing in her scent.

"So, lunch was with Jeannie and me and this other dude who just hired on, supposed to be some hot shot microbiorobotics specialist fresh out of CalTech grad school. He was a horror show from the start — one of those people who give servers a hard time just because they can. Right after we sit down, he takes out a stack of dollar bills and leaves them on the table. When our server comes to take our order, he gets all self-important and conspiratorial and says, loud enough for her to hear, 'This is the only way to get decent service.' Then he says to the server, 'See this? This is your tip. Any time you don't come back quick enough with a refill, or if something's wrong with my food, or if I think your attitude sucks, I take a bill off the top. You get whatever's left.'

"I was so pissed. I mean, I used to wait tables in college, I know how hard it can be to deal with entitled jackasses like that, especially when you have literally no recourse. I told him, put that bammer nonsense back in your wallet. And I said to the server, I'm so sorry, I didn't know I'd be dining with a raging asshole today. Go ahead and take his order but feel free to ignore any of his complaints and requests because I am going to tip the _shit_ out of you no matter what."

I have to smile at her enthusiasm, her bubbly and excited chattering. "What did Newsome — euh, Jeannie say about that, my fearless little social crusader?"

"She didn't say anything at first, which made me kinda nervous. Thought maybe I'd overstepped. So I spent most of the meal nodding and making appropriate noises while she explained about the company culture, our confidentiality agreements, what would be expected of us, who we would be reporting to, that kind of thing. But when we were finished, she said, 'One of the reasons I like to take new hires out to eat is to observe how they treat people who are perceived to be in subordinate roles. I find it an amazingly accurate indicator of character: the person who is nice to colleagues and superiors but obnoxious to the waiter is, at the very least, not a nice person; at worst, it makes me doubt their values and ethics system.' You should have seen the asshole's face. He made excuses about having to attend a meeting and left as soon as he could. Jeannie and I didn't want to camp at the table, so we went to a coffee shop a few doors down and had a nice chat for like an hour. She's a total sweetheart."

Holding her closely, I kiss her again, entwining my tongue with hers, smiling against her lips. "You may be the only person in the whole of the Dyad Group — including all the international branches — who thinks so."

"Their loss for not bothering to get to know her." Cosima guerilla-kisses me on the tip of my nose and rests her head on my shoulder, nuzzling into my neck. "She can't say anything about any current employees, of course, but she told me stories about some of the higher-ups from years ago. Back in the '90s, when cell phones with cameras were starting to get popular, there was a huge problem with department heads sending dick pics to female coworkers. Jeannie actually had to update the employee manual with specific directives not to send dick pics to anyone from their phones, not to use company copy machines and scanners to make pictures of their dick or fax pictures of their dick, and so on. Now she may have to update it again to remind them not to use 3D scanners and printers to make copies of their dick, or if they must, then to do it after hours and not leave their sad little plastic dicks lying around for other people to find."

Despite the sense of foreboding sinking leadenly into my gut, I can't help laughing with her. "I didn't realize it was such a ubiquitous issue."

"According to Jeannie, if you have a Y chromosome and you're attached to a dick, sooner or later you will be compelled to take a picture of it and send it to some woman somewhere." Soft lips nibble along the edge of my ear. "She was a little concerned when I told her about you."

"Me!" I rear my head back so I can see her face. "What did she say about me? She hardly knows me."

"That's what she said. Said you were always polite but kinda closed and hard to read, but at least she hadn't heard anything negative about you. You passed the waiter test with flying colors, by the way."

"Well, that's good... I guess?"

"Mostly she wanted to make sure you hadn't coerced me into anything, especially given our relative positions in Dyad's hierarchy. I had to bite my tongue before I said something totally inappropriate. Speaking of which, we're probably violating about eleventy jillion rules about employee dating in the workplace right now." At my wan smile, she slides one hand down to cup my cheek. "You're so serious today, Dr. Cormier. And not that you look bad — I don't think it's possible for you to ever look _bad_ — but I like you better when you're not so buttoned up and covered. Take the tanktop and tight jeans you were wearing the other day; there's almost nothing hotter than the soft butch look on a really beautiful femme."

"I had an unexpected meeting first thing this morning."

"Hence the Serious Hair, too." She kisses me softly. "I missed you when I woke up — you must have left your place super early."

"There was a lot of work to take care of."

She brushes her lips down one cheek, along my jawline, and back up to the other side. "Thank you for the croissants, by the way; they were awesome. Would have been even more awesome if you had been there to eat them with me."

"Sorry, chérie."

"It was nice to be able to walk to work. I got to flirt with like a dozen dogs in the park, and talk with a really friendly traffic cop to get directions when I made a wrong turn, and I found a cute little coffee shop down the street where they have literally a hundred kinds of tea and an actual tea sommelier, and then my hair caught on fire and all my clothes burned off and I was like totally naked — "

"What?"

One eyebrow arches. "Just making sure you were still with me — you looked like you were zoning out." Her lips gently claim mine. "Where did you go?"

 _Cesse de te dérober!_ Carefully I spill her to her feet so I can get up. Holding out my hand to her, I take a deep breath. "Cosima, will you come with me? I need to show you something."


	3. Chapter 3

The smell of weed is evident even from the elevator. When the doors open onto the entranceway, I'm quite sure that I am not imagining the haze in the air. Not for the first time, I think it a good thing that the flat is a floor-through and shares neither walls nor ventilation with a neighbor.

Music plays through hidden speakers. I don't recognize the piece or the singer, but the melodic, harmonic motifs repeating over strongly percussive beats are strangely, irresistibly hypnotic. Almost any other time, this would make me want to dance.

"Cosima?" My voice echoes throughout the far too bare hallway. Noting absently that Felix's repair of the dent has indeed left the wall looking good as new, I follow the trail of the ever more familiar skunky scent to the living room, where the sliding glass door to the enormous terrace stands partly open.

Shutting the door behind me, I find her huddled under her coat on a chaise, bobbing her head vaguely in time with the music. My practical knowledge of cannabis culture has expanded exponentially thanks to her, but I am at a loss attempting to parse from the miscellany scattered over the side table — a dark palm sized screw-top jar, a tiny empty plastic vial, her grinder, a lighter, a colorful glass pipe whose bowl is streaked with brown residue, and an ashtray that already contains what seems to me a substantial pile of crumbled remains — exactly what she has consumed.

"Three grams of Gorilla Glue #4 and half a gram of shatter, if you must know," she says helpfully.

Blowing out a puff of air, I do a quick calculation in my head to figure out how much THC she has dosed herself with and come up with _approximately enough to anesthetize a horse_.

"You're stoned."

Bloodshot eyes slowly lift to meet mine. "'Stoned' is a gross understatement, Dr. Cormier. I am way beyond stoned. Like, light-years — no, _parsecs_ beyond stoned. I am utterly fucked up, ripped, baked, blazed and bombed out of my skull, and I intend to remain in this state for as long as I can. Which, considering that my ass is comprehensively nailed to this chair, is probably going to be a long damn time."

It is a curious thing that the higher or drunker Cosima gets, the more precise her enunciation becomes; her language and phrasing remain as uniquely slangy as ever, but each word shimmers with cut-glass exactitude. Suppressing a sigh, I turn on one of the nearby butane patio heaters, then join her on the wide chaise, gathering her close to me and tucking the edges of her coat back around her. The pounding of her heart is palpable through the thin material of her sleeveless dress; gently I rub her upper arm, my fingers trailing over the striated round of her deltoid, the well defined delineation between biceps and triceps. "I suppose that asking if you are all right is somewhat superfluous."

"You suppose correctly. Aside from the fact that I can't, like, feel my face, I'm just peachy." She burrows against me. I listen to her breathing, listen absently to the music pulsing around us. "Delphine," she says after a while, "do you know anything about the Etruscans?"

I blink. "As in the ancient Italian civilization?"

"As in. Extra points to House Cormier for phrasing the answer in the form of a question." Reaching across me toward the side table, Cosima picks up the jar and extracts a fat nug; even with a breeze blowing across the terrace, the smell is stickily potent. "Mmm, frosty," she says, about nothing in particular. Breaking off a small piece and inserting it into the stem hole of her pipe, she puts the rest of the nug through her grinder, carefully pouring out the herb from the screened section to fill and pack the bowl. "You want greens on this?" I shake my head. "Good. Because I was planning to snap it, anyway." Which she does, in a long single pull, her finger moving off and on the carb in a series of practiced, perfectly timed motions until she clears the last of the smoke, then releases the lungful in a thick cloudy stream.

Dropping the pipe and lighter on the table, she settles back in my arms, her small body limply heavy. "Three and a half grams," she mumbles into my neck.

Idly I wonder if I can get a contact high from kissing her forehead, where a light sheen of sweat has broken out. "What were you going to say about the Etruscans?"

She tilts her head, her blurry eyes widening enormously. "Holy shit! That's an amazing coincidence — I was just thinking about the Etruscans this afternoon!"

There is no point in correcting her; in her current condition she has the short-term memory of a fruit fly. "Why were you thinking about them, chérie?"

"Studied them in college. Needed an elective my sophomore year so I took a course in ancient religions. It was supposed to be a survey course but the prof had a serious lady-boner for the Etruscans, so we spent most of the semester focusing on them and their influence on Rome. There was this really hot girl in the class — fuck, what was her name? Kathryn something. Classics major. Perfect heart-shaped ass. Gorgeous auburn hair and green eyes. Like seriously green eyes, green like a cat's. She was a biter; I wound up having to go to the student health center for antibiotics a couple of times because of her. That's how I found out I was allergic to cephalosporins. They make me break out in hives and then I itch for days."

Patiently I wait for any further digressions but they seem to have spun themselves to their conclusions. "The Etruscans?" I prod.

"Right, the Etruscans. They used to practice a kind of divination called haruspicy," she says, pronouncing the term slowly and carefully. "Haruspicy, haruspicy... ha-RUS-picy. Funny word, isn't it? Haruspicy."

"Yes. What does it mean?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Haruspicy was performed by the haruspex, who was specially trained to be able to determine the will of the gods, to forecast weather, and also to predict the course of a patient's illness by examining the entrails and liver of a sacrificed animal."

The dull roaring in my ears threatens to drown out the increase of my pulse. My hands and limbs are suddenly cold, though not because of the ambient temperature. I hold her more tightly, doing my best to ignore the pang gripping my chest and the clammy coil of dread writhing in my gut. "Cosima... "

"Poor Jennifer, poor sacrificial lamb." A fit of giggling overtakes her. "There's probably some kind of cosmic penalty for practicing haruspicy without the blessing of the gods, or whoever. Though I might get special dispensation for doing it on my clone — kinda like looking into a majorly fucked up funhouse mirror. Except, you know, without the fun part. I have totally cute kidneys, don't I? They're so... kidney shaped."

I close my eyes, unable to keep from picturing her stricken expression when I had pulled back the evidence sheet to reveal Jennifer's face. Cosima's face, bare of makeup, slack and at peace now that it was no longer in the inexorable grip of ravaging illness.

Cosima's unimaginable bravery in literally being confronted with her future had been the only thing that had kept me going. Breaking down in front of her would have been the ultimate failure, the ultimate betrayal.

Spurred on by the resolute need to stay in control for her, my hands and voice had remained steady throughout the preliminaries: weighing, measuring and radiographing the body; scanning it with a Wood's lamp (negative, thank goodness); noting the lack of any external wounds beyond the small incisions left from Nealon's laparoscopic instruments and the subsequent partial inflation of the abdominal cavity; all the while dictating my findings into a microphone that I'd Bluetoothed via my phone directly to cloud storage as well as to my office computer. "The patient, Jennifer McKenna Fitzsimmons, is a Caucasian female, age 31, G0P0. Hair, dark brown. Eyes, brown. Height, 157.5 centimeters, weight, 43.2 kilograms. No identifying scars..."

I had had a bad moment when placing the body block beneath Jennifer's shoulders, which caused her chest to arch and her arms and neck to fall back, her mouth opening to bare the teeth in a rictus. The thought of having recently seen Cosima countless times in exactly this position had produced a vertigo-like disconnect so profound it had nearly rocked me off my feet.

"You doing all right, Dr. Cormier?" The desert-dry tone and the ironic hitch of her eyebrow had told me that she'd known precisely what I was thinking, goading me instantly back into the professional, clinically detached mode that enabled me to begin the Y-incision.

Once the chest flap had been reflected back and the ribcage cut and dissected away, it had been far easier to immerse myself in the procedure, using the Virchow method, to put from my mind the image of Jennifer as a living, breathing person and to focus on her component parts. I had left nothing unexamined, even taking blood from the heart, a sample of the contents of the stomach, urine from the bladder, fluid from the vitreous of the eyes. Methodically, scrupulously, I had made sure to obtain tissue sections from areas that were free of the marks left by Nealon's instruments, preserving them in formalin in carefully marked containers.

She had not missed that I was taking two sets of sections from each organ, but I was counting on her not knowing that that was not standard procedure. One set would be Dyad's, to be processed and examined in-house. The other I had sent via an outside courier to the central lab at CFS for independent confidential analysis, paid for out of my own pocket because I did not trust that the Dyad samples would not be made to simply disappear by Rachel's directive.

Considering my actions now, I have to acknowledge the very real possibility that they may get me fired. At worst... well, if anything happens to me, at least a piece of the overall puzzle will be in safe custody and Jennifer will not have died in vain.

Hugging Cosima tightly, I press a lingering kiss to her temple. "I'm going to bed, chérie. I hope you'll join me soon."

"'K." She flutters her fingers at me in the vague shape of a wave, blinking owlishly, then reaches again for her dwindling stash.

I remove my coat and drape it over her to make sure she stays warm, then go inside. Locating the sound system's control panel in the living room, I fiddle with the touchpads until I figure out how to silence the inside speakers.

In the bathroom, I wash my face and brush my teeth more assiduously than usual, but even after countless other such small delays she still has not come in from the terrace by the time I finally fall into bed. Despite my physical and emotional exhaustion, I lie awake, my brain humming restlessly. Briefly I debate going back out to her to borrow oblivion, to make the images and sounds and textures and scents branded indelibly into my sense memory fade into numbness. Instead I give in at last to the tightening ache in my chest, crying silently at first and then sobbing uncontrollably until the toll that has been exacted from me becomes a little more bearable, at least for now.


	4. Chapter 4

"Enfin, ça y est!"

Flattening the last of the boxes, I stack it on top of the rest to be taken down to the basement for recycling. I wipe off the dust from my hands onto the seat of my jeans and look around.

Strange to think that my life's possessions take up so little room, make so little impression.

Only in the kitchen is there any real evidence that someone actually occupies this place. My freshly washed pots and pans dangle gleaming from their rectangular rack, newly suspended from chains that I bolted into the ceiling joists. On the island, the handmade cutting board that I inherited from my grandmother holds pride of place; over the years I've had its oddly shaped handle and a few deep cracks in its distinctively wide-grained surface repaired, but retiring or replacing it would be unthinkable. Mémé's battered Sabatier chef's knife and slicer stand out shabbily among my collection of much sleeker, more recently acquired knives; the old carbon steel blades are thick and heavy and stained with the patina of decades of use, but I still pull them out from time to time, warmed by the memory of gnarled but steady hands guiding mine.

I find myself wondering again how Cosima is doing. Despite the staggering amount of weed she had smoked last night, she had left early, long before I had awoken this morning. Her clothes and overnight bag are gone. I am not sure how much to read into the fact that her toiletries are gone as well; the hall bathroom she has co-opted is clean and completely empty.

Glancing at my watch, I frown reflexively. I grab a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and my phone from the breakfast bar counter. In the living room I sink into the plump cushions of the sofa, arching and stretching my back and arms with a thankful groan.

I debate for a moment what to say in my text. Best to stick with the banal until I can judge the temperature of the room. **Are you all right, chérie?**

She replies almost immediately. `Got a mondo case of cotton-mouth, otherwise I'm not bad. Where are you?`

I am pathetically relieved, and at the same time irritated that she hasn't answered my calls or returned any of the voicemails I left this morning. **I told Aldous I was taking a personal day. I've just finished unpacking. Now I'm waiting for the art movers — they're supposed to be here at 2:00.**

` Felix said he would be there to supervise the installation`

**That's nice of him, but why?**

` He's sort of territorial about his pieces. Wants to make sure they don't fuck up anything, I guess. And I think he's dying for you to be his hag`

**His HAG?!?**

` You've never heard the term "fag hag"?`

**Ah. Like "Will and Grace." Isn't that considered pejorative?**

` I'm bi-queer and therefore entitled to its appropriation and so, by proxy, are you. You actually *watched* that show?`

**Would you think less of me if I said yes?**

` Don't be silly. I'm just trying to wrap my brain around the concept`

**American television is rather pervasive in Europe. It's one of the ways I learned colloquial English.**

` Well, something must have worked. Is that what they do in French schools these days, plunk little kids down in front of the TV?`

**Of course not. We actually started as children by learning songs.**

` No shit. What kind of songs?`

**Folk songs, nursery rhymes, that kind of thing. The tunes make the words easy to remember and the structure allows you to quickly absorb the rhythm, the bones of a language.**

` You should know, Dr. I Speak Many Languages Fluently You Ignorant American`

**Ha, ha. English was harder than all the rest of them put together.**

` What was the hardest part?`

**The pronunciation! It drove me crazy, still does sometimes. It's infuriatingly inconsistent — there is no rule that doesn't have an exception and in many cases you have no choice but to simply learn them all.**

` Like what?`

**Try reading this aloud: the tough coughs as he ploughs the dough.**

` Okay, I can see where that could get confusing for a non-native speaker. What other shows did you watch?`

**You're going to laugh at me.**

` No I won't, I swear`

**When I was in primary school, my favorite show was "Saved by the Bell."** No answer. **You're laughing, aren't you.**

` Dude. I almost fell out of my chair`

**So much for swearing. How am I ever going to be able to take your word for anything now?**

` There has to be an exception for finding out that your brilliant, incredibly sophisticated girlfriend used to love one of the cheesiest, most terribly acted shows in existence`

**I was eight!**

` Kidding, babe. I watched it, too, when it was in reruns; seemed like it was always on when I got home from school. Were you Team Zack or Team Slater?`

**Neither. My favorite character was Jessie. I can still recite the "I'm so excited!" scene from memory.**

` I would give up weed for a month if you would make a video of that and put it up on YouTube right now`

**That is not going to happen.**

` What, the video or my giving up weed?`

**Either. Both.**

` Spoilsport`

**Brat. How are you settling in?**

` Pretty well. Redmond in Requisitions says the rest of the equipment will be in by end of day on Monday, so I should be able to really start digging in next week. In the meantime I'm reviewing Jennifer's tapes again and seeing if there's anything else I can get out of Nealon's records`

**Okay. Call me if you need anything. Will I see you tonight?**

Several moments pass. `I'll let you know`, is all she says.

Opaque little shit.

I am somewhat reassured by her apparent resilience but frustrated that she is deliberately avoiding any serious discussion — any discussion at all, for that matter; the distance implicit in her refusing to communicate except by text is glaringly obvious.

My conscience nags at me, but in the end it is overwhelmed by the need to see her, to make sure that she really is okay. After hesitating for a moment, I reach for my laptop. Turning it on, I remote-login to my computer at work and then into my account in Dyad's security system.

The first thing I notice is that Cosima has oriented her desk so that her screen cannot be seen by the lab's main camera, which is well hidden but clearly not impossible to find. The position of the desk places her back to the window in the door, but I would be willing to bet that she has made some provision for keeping an eye out for anyone who might be peeking in at her.

Her face, pale but alert, is visible above her monitor. Her posture is relaxed, seated cross-legged in her desk chair with a cozy looking beige knit throw draped over her lap. Idly she twirls her pen, sometimes spinning it back and forth around her thumb, sometimes doing complicated shifts and rotations in dizzying combinations that make it appear to be nothing but a blur. At her elbow is a notebook open to a page half filled with her neat handwriting. A ceramic mug rests on a warmer within easy reach.

Like every laboratory everywhere, there are signs posted on the walls forbidding the presence and consumption of food and drink. Like every scientist everywhere, she ignores that rule; the first personal items she brought in were an electric kettle and an assortment of her favorite teas. Now I can see that she has added a mini fridge and a microwave.

She has disabled the keylogger but, smartly, not the activity monitoring software, which would have red-flagged her in the server-side admin tools; at the moment she has her webmail client open. According to the logs, she did indeed spend much of the morning viewing and taking notes on Jennifer's recordings but was interrupted at around 11:00 by a Skype call from an untraceable incoming IP address. To take the call, she had switched her computer off the corporate VPN, presumably to a private, secure connection tethered to her phone, which is currently sitting on a corner of her desk.

I zoom in on the phone. Even in high definition, it's difficult to make out any fine details, but I'm fairly certain it's the one I've mentally dubbed the Clone Phone. Not the identical one she uses for general purposes, the one she had used to text me; that phone is now resting on the other side of her keyboard.

Which means that the Skype call was most likely from Sarah, who is still mysteriously missing, along with Kira. Neither Cosima nor Felix seems especially concerned about her absence, so presumably they know where she is and why she has been away.

The back of my scalp tingling, I note my conclusions in my report, proofread it quickly, then encrypt it and send it to Aldous.

My phone buzzes. I tap the alert to see Felix waving into the lobby camera. Behind him are a pair of coverall-clad men bearing a huge crate that looms over his shoulder.

**Felix is here with the painting. I'll be in touch — bisous, chérie.**

` Later, dude. Pics or it didn't happen`

Smiling despite myself, I shut off the phone, close my laptop and wait for the elevator to arrive.

Felix steps out first and stands, hands on hips, giving the movers a warning glare. No doubt accustomed to demanding clients, the two men ignore him and with the ease of long practice maneuver the crate from its diagonal position in the car over onto its long side.

"Hello, Felix."

"Delphine." Giving me an up-and-down evaluating glance, he obviously finds nothing in my grubby tanktop and faded jeans worthy of remark.

Felix, however, is resplendent in a knee-length leather-trimmed olive green trench coat with quilted sleeves. I reflect once again that he wears women's clothes better than most women do. "Michael Kors?"

His expression does not exactly soften, but at least it is marginally less guarded. "Fall 2012 line."

We watch as the movers carefully and efficiently uncrate the painting. After double-checking the alignment and position, they fasten a long wooden cleat to the studs with its bevel facing upward using 3" screws, then make sure that the mating cleat and spacer already attached to the back of the frame are secure before painstakingly hanging it in place.

After we inspect and approve of the work, I hand each of them an envelope with cash and thank them. They nod in acknowledgment, quickly collect all the packing materials and clean up the minimal debris, and then they are gone.

Together Felix and I admire his painting, which dominates most of the entranceway wall opposite the elevator and brings the previously cold, empty space to vibrant life. The LED spotlights arrayed along a track on the ceiling illuminate it evenly, allowing me to clearly see the small but significant change that he has made to the piece.

Cosima's abstract image has been painted over and replaced by a nearly photorealistic airbrushed representation of the two of us kissing, my hands cupping her face, her hands tangled in my hair. Turning, I look a question at him.

He shrugs one slim shoulder. "You make her happy."

My chest floods with glowing warmth; unexpected tears prickle at my eyes. Hugging him would be awkward for us both, I suspect, but I want to show him how grateful I am for his thoughtfulness, however grudging. Suddenly I have an idea. "Give me a penny."

Up go his eyebrows, but obligingly he digs into a pocket and fishes out a coin, handing it to me.

I walk over to the kitchen; Felix follows curiously. From the knife block, I pull out my Wusthof Grand Prix, one of the first decent chef's knives I ever purchased, when I was still in school. I've since gravitated to Japanese-style blades, including a custom-made Maumasi gyuto that in comparison to the German steel is breathtakingly light and thin and falls through ingredients with hardly a whisper of resistance, but the Wusthof is still one of my workhorses, its edge maintained to razor sharpness.

Using a pair of utility scissors, I cut a panel from a cardboard box; carefully I fold it around the knife into a package that protects both the blade and the bearer. Taping the whole thing securely, I hand it to Felix.

His long lashes flutter as he blinks. "Thank you. Erm... why the penny?"

"Because it's bad luck to give a knife as a gift — it symbolizes the severing of a friendship. But if you buy it from me with your penny, that's all right." I smile at him. "Can I give you a lift home?"

"Thanks, I'd appreciate it." An insouciant smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. "And maybe you'd be so kind as to get that whacking great piece of lumber you call a cello off my living room floor."


	5. Chapter 5

"Putain de bordel de merde!" Groggily I grope about on the nightstand until my hand lands on my phone, clawing at it to silence its infernal shrilling. "Allô?"

_"Delphine?"_

The panicked tightness in her voice jolts me instantly awake. "Cosima?"'

_"Oh, god, Delphine, I'm so sorry. Um. Can we come up?"_

_We?_ "Of course, chérie. You have the elevator keycard that I gave you?"

_"Yeah."_

She disconnects the call.

Groaning, I roll over onto my back, allowing myself a moment to wallow in disgruntled martyrdom. Throwing off the duvet, I resentfully drag myself out of the supremely comfortable bed and bear-dance my way into my dressing gown.

Keeping the lights dimmed to their lowest level to spare my gritty, heavy lidded eyes, I plod barefoot to the entranceway, arriving as the elevator opens to disgorge a worried looking Cosima supporting a small figure swimming in an oversized dark gray sweatshirt. It takes me a moment to recognize the extremely bedraggled person. "Sarah? Cosima, what's wrong?"

Cosima draws back the hood of the sweatshirt, revealing a crude bandage consisting of a rolled-up washcloth tucked against the left side of Sarah's neck. The washcloth, which probably used to be white, is saturated with blood.

Carefully I peel it away, sucking in my breath between my teeth as I get a look at the wound.

Questions can wait. "Bathroom. Now."

I direct her to sit at the vanity while I go to my cache of first aid supplies. Cosima raises an eyebrow at the extent of the collection, which occupies an entire six-foot cabinet, but says nothing.

Dazed to the point of stupor, Sarah looks even worse in the bright incandescent lights surrounding the mirror. Her skin is sallow and blotchy, with dark smudgy circles under her eyes and an ugly bruise surrounding the laceration below her ear. The edges of the cut are clean, very deep and perfectly straight. "Razor blade?"

She nods. Blood wells up out of the wound and spills sluggishly over to run down her neck and pool at the hollows of her collarbone and throat.

"Don't move, idiot!" Gingerly I pull her hair out of the way, dabbing at the blood to clear my field of view. I try not to wince in sympathy — even the barest touch of the gauze is clearly agonizing. Using a penlight, I can see that the cut extends well into the belly of the sternocleidomastoid but not, thank goodness, as deep as the carotid artery; it parallels the direction of the muscle fibers and should close well in a single layer.

Rummaging in a drawer, I find a bottle of ibuprofen and shake out four tablets into her hand; with scarcely a glance, she pops the pills into her mouth and swallows them dry. "You need stitches. I assume you don't want Dyad or any officials involved?"

Catching herself before she nods again, she bites her lip, which like in our previous encounter is chapped and roughened. "Yeah. No bloody cops, no bloody hospitals. And especially no bloody Dr. Aldous Fucking Leekie."

"Right." Evaluating angles and positions, I frown. "I think it will be easier for you if I cut off your sweatshirt, if that's okay."

A faint smirk ghosts across her lips. "Not mine. Bloke it belongs to i'n't going to complain."

My eyes meet Cosima's in the mirror. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly.

More questions that can wait.

Heavy bandage scissors make quick work of the blood-soaked sweatshirt, leaving her in a black tanktop. The coppery tang of blood and the smell of stale sweat overlie the distinct scent of her skin, mingling with an undertone of warm leather; it's not an altogether unpleasant mélange, but I find myself wondering how I could ever have mistaken her for Cosima, even for a moment. "I'm going to inject a local anesthetic around the wound. Do you have any allergies to medications?"

"Not's far as I know."

"I'm afraid I don't have any narcotics or anything else for pain, so this will hurt."

Sarah takes a deep breath, lets it out in a long juddery exhalation. "Well, that's too bad because this whole thing's just been a ruddy picnic so far, hasn't it."

Taking her gallows humor as tacit permission to proceed, I draw up a few ccs of bupivicaine and start to direct the syringe toward her neck when a small hand on my wrist stops me.

"Wait, Delphine, just a minute?"

I give Cosima a sharp look; she returns it serenely. Shrugging, I make a "go ahead" gesture and take a step back.

With one finger, she presses firmly at a spot at the midline near the top of Sarah's head; her other hand digs the tips of her thumb and index finger into the fleshy depressions on either side of the second metacarpal of Sarah's left hand.

Acupressure points, I recall vaguely from a long-ago lecture on alternative medicine: pain points on the hand, calming point on the scalp. "Will that be enough?"

"Probably not," Cosima says with a slight grimace, "but it may take the edge off a little."

I nod. "I'll be right back." Leaving with a brief backward glance at the surreally gory tableau, I head toward the bar in the living room; its liquor cabinet was fully stocked courtesy of Dyad when I moved in. Rapidly scanning the offerings, I grab a bottle of Grey Goose and return to the bathroom. Peeling off the foil wrapper and tweaking out the stopper, I unceremoniously clunk the vodka down on the counter in front of Sarah.

Without a word, she picks up the bottle and carefully tilts it toward her mouth, holding her head scrupulously still. Her throat ripples smoothly as she gulps what looks like the equivalent of three large shots in quick succession.

Sarah holds the bottle out to Cosima, who lets go of her hand to accept it, upending it and taking a swallow.

I reach for the bottle but Cosima moves it out of the way. "Nope. Afterward."

"Espèce de salope," I say, but without heat. She sticks out her tongue at me. I narrow my eyes at her in a mock glare.

Reassessing Sarah, who due to a combination of the alcohol and Cosima's attentions is by now noticeably more relaxed, I quickly infiltrate the bupivicaine around the wound, then get my suture kit ready while giving the anesthetic a little time to cook.

I shove a 14g needle through the top of a liter bottle of sterile saline; using the needle's hub as a makeshift spray valve, I squeeze the bottle, irrigating with a steady hissing stream until the wound and its surrounding tissues are as clean and free of debris as possible. Cosima wads up the pieces of the sweatshirt and holds them in place to soak up the overflow, which runs red, then pink, then finally clear. "Have you had a tetanus booster within the last ten years?"

"No shots since I was a little kid."

"Okay. Find a doc-in-a-box and get a booster tomorrow." I probe the edges of the wound with the tip of the syringe's needle. "Can you feel that?"

She purses her lips. "I can feel it, but it doesn't hurt, if that makes sense."

"Good." The lessening of tension in her body is palpable. "Hold her hair, please," I say to Cosima, who gathers the wild mane of dark brown locks into a thick bundle away from the wound and lets Sarah clutch at her free hand.

Pulling on a pair of sterile gloves, I unfold a drape and place it over Sarah's shoulder like a shawl. Working quickly but carefully, I close the laceration with 5-0 nylon in a simple interrupted pattern with just enough tension to neatly appose and partially evert the edges. "There. You shouldn't have much of a scar, and anyway your hair will hide it most of the time. I'll remove the sutures in about a week." With a stack of gauze and more sterile saline, I clean the fresh and dried blood from her skin. "Apply a cold compress for a few minutes every few hours for the first couple of days; that will help keep the inflammation down. A bag of frozen peas wrapped in a light towel works well."

Sarah nods. In the mirror she exchanges glances with Cosima. "I know I don't really have the right to put you in this position, but I have to ask you not to tell Leekie about this. It's not just about me — it could be dangerous for you and Cosima, too, if they find out I got you involved."

Her voice is raspy, sounding disconcertingly like Cosima's after a coughing fit. I shake my head with a half smile. "Consider it doctor-patient privilege. No one needs to know."

"Thank you, Delphine." She slumps in the chair, her energy clearly fading.

Just as I am wondering what I am going to do with her for the night, my phone buzzes. "Text from Felix," I say, reading it:

`I've come to collect my sister's remains`

**Where are you?**

` Outside the back entrance to the parking garage`

**We'll be down in a few minutes. Do you see the cameras?**

` Don't be bloody insulting`

"He's here to take you home," I say to Sarah. "Can you walk?"

"Don't be bloody insulting."

I have to laugh at her unwitting echoing of Felix's words. They truly are closer than most flesh-and-blood siblings.

In the closet off the entranceway, I root around until I find my old knit coat; it's comically long on her, but the deep hood hides her face reasonably well. The three of us take the elevator down to the garage, keeping to the perimeter away from the lights. Waving at Cosima and Sarah to wait in a dark corner, I continue until I reach the back door. Opening it a crack, I peer into the darkness but of course cannot see anything. "Felix?" I whisper.

He eels his way inside, following me over to where Cosima is holding Sarah. Enfolding her in a fierce embrace, he looks at me. "She'll be all right?"

"She's still a little shocky, and she'll be sore when the local wears off in six to eight hours, but yes."

The tension that sharpens the angles of his face relaxes minutely. "Thank you." Holding out a small duffel bag toward Cosima, he gives her a crooked smile. "Brought some of your clothes and stuff, Geek Monkey. Figured you'd be more comfortable here. Bit less crowded than my place at the moment."

They exchange a look whose significance escapes me, then she raises up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. "Thanks, Fee."

Sarah gives Cosima a brief but heartfelt hug. Felix guides her to the door, timing the sweep of the cameras before slipping out into the night.

Cosima and I take the elevator back up to my flat in silence. Once we are upstairs, she wraps her arms around me and presses the length of her body against mine. "You're shaking," she says in surprise.

I tighten my hold on her waist, burying my mouth in her hair. Shuddering, I take a deep breath. "That's the second time in 24 hours that I've had to sew up someone with your face. It's not something I want to get accustomed to."

We stand like that for long moments, taking quiet comfort in the feel of one another. I breathe in her scent, listen to my heartbeat gradually slow to normal. Tipping up her chin, I kiss her gently, lingeringly. "Come to bed, chérie."

"I need to clean up a bit," she murmurs against my lips. "Meet you there."

"Of course." Caressing her face, I gaze directly into her eyes. "And then we are going to talk."

She rubs her cheek against my palm and nods.


End file.
